Bicycle Treaded Upon
So I went FLYING!! this weekend... We did 1.0 h on the Texan again, but this time did stuff like simple stalls, incipient spins, aileron stalls, circuits. Great time, great time, and having a demonstration of a full on aileron stall was really informative. I got taught about this stuff, but thankfully never experienced it in my flying and I've never had it demonstrated before; this was good! Somebody was flying a
Cirrus when we got back, and took off behind us after we landed - wealth from Wagga Wagga I'm told. It's the same kind of airplane that the Yankee's pitcher flew into that Manhattan building a few weeks ago.
On Sunday, I dropped by the
Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, which is a World Heritage Listed building. Among other things, it served as a two-time federal parliament in the early 1900s. They had an open day to exhibit the space and there were several displays from museums around Victoria, including the
Point Cook Aviation Museum (!!), and the Melbourne Horological Society - a group of people joined by a common interest in clocks. The Point Cook Museum is based at the airfield of the same name, which was the birthplace in 1913 of what later became the RAAF. I had a great discussion with one of their volunteers, who happened to be married to an Edmontonian. It's a very small world.
After that, I did some Christmas shopping (I know, I know), then enjoyed the sunshine in the city for a while before hopping the train back to Clayton whereupon I found that some wankers in Clayton had stole the rear wheel off my bike :-(
Well, I guess they needed it more than I did, because it would have been a heck of a lot less work to take the front wheel, what with two bolts attaching it and no extra wiring for the derailer system.
Augggh. On that note, I've booked my flight home!
I get into Calgary on 4 Dec, but I'm first making a stopover in London to visit a friend. Now, this isn't the permanent homeward trip I was originally planning as it would have been too darn difficult to coordinate the suspension of candidature stuff after 15 Nov, hope there were still seats available, then be able to pay for those seats. As it stands, I come back to Aus on 4 Jan and I'll let you know how things stand when I get to that bridge.
In the meantime, the last bit of Japan:
I completed, at least to the limit of my patience, my field work a couple of days before leaving Japan and used the time to package up the rock samples. And also to go for a tour around Hokkaido.
The coast on the other side of the island is a lot more wild than on my side, but on several days, the weather was beautiful and the waves weren't that big. As you go north along this road, it weaves in and out of the mountainsides, but pretty much follows the coast for many tens of kilometres.
It was a treat to have this kind of drive so accessible, but the downshot was that in stormy weather, the spray from the ocean would coat the car in salt.
A little further afield, as I neared Sapporo, I took a detour to a caldera complex west of the airport. There are several active volcanoes there, including one down which they had the downhill and super-g races during the Olympics in 1972. The mountain (Eniwa-dake) has now fully regrown with barely a trace of any deforestation left on it, meaning there isn't any more skiing to be had.
Lastly, regarding sweets in Japan: though they are rare, they are quite good. As I had so few while I was there, the ones I did have were much more rich than they normally would have been. Their chocolate is not a sugary as most, but it is good. Most snacks tend to be made with some form of rice and the variety of rice crackers is staggering! But, there are some rather odd concoctions of sweet and I'll leave you guessing thus:
Japan Japan Japan
The creeks we trotted up and down were basically like this first photo shows. Some were a little wider than others, some were a little more buggy than others. Some were more slippery than others. Of those, the buggy valleys were the most irritating and the worst was a day in a narrow stream valley during a particularly hot and humid day.
The bug is this mystery, non-biting, flying, crab-looking thingy, about the size of a large pin head. You can't notice them until they land on you, then they attach themselves to your clothing and scamper sideways. If you try and squish them, they keep scampering; if you try and flick them off, they either fly away or keep scampering. Then only way to satisfy the knee-jerk 'augh, bug on me' feeling is to grab them between your fingers and roll. Then, they'll leap off your fingers unhurt, but without wings and you won't see them again. They are as hardy as ticks, but thankfully they don't bite.
Anyways, couple a swarm of these scampering on your face, humidity, frustration, and finally a slip into the water, and you get me 'spitting a dummy', which is a quaint Aussie phrase for a tantrum of the adult variety.
One morning, we were in town at the right time for the scheduled exercises. The Japanese have this well-known tune to which every one is able to whistle along. Accompanying that is a series of well-known 'movements' which constitute exercise. They basically swing through all their joints and up and down and kick and bop to the music. It's really unique and they actually broadcast the whole thing periodically on T.V. with stadia full of people moving along. Unique. As far as I know, every one does it, particularly factory workers, school children, and people at home. Talk about an effective way of encouraging fitness - try getting any western nation to have institutionalised calesthenics and you'd get discrimation lawsuits.
Look closely in Andy's hands and you will notice them well instrumented. We went to a graphite deposit somewhere in the distal Japanese bush. It was definitely interesting rock with these knuckle-sized balls of graphite thickly populating the rock and Andy went to work extracting samples with such gusto, I had to step back and take a picture. He's like a rock beaver - industrious, furious, and dangerous with his native tools.
More giant beetles. That's Andy for those wondering who the rock Dr is.
Later the next day, my associate supervisor Roberto showed up and we started touring further afield. The first stop was at a granite outcrop next to the ocean, and in the other picture, you can see that Japanese rocks exude concrete after landslides. The infrastructure is wonderous in this place.
Soon, we ended up in central northern Hokkaido looking at some other rocks in a river valley.
We later followed that up with Sake. It hits me like a brick, sort of how Baccardi 171 would hit any of you guys. However, served hot and in small quantities, there's not as much alcohol left in it and I was good to go the next day.
Oh, I went flying today!!!!! The Texan, though an ultralight, is superb. Yeah, really superb. Fast, agile like you don't even know, smooth, and it's a stick! Not concerned about flying ultralights anymore if they're anything like the Texan. Check it out
here. Fun fun fun!!
Wild and Wooly Throats, Cat, and a Car.
That sounds like the name of a movie with questionable morals, huh?
I'm throwing logic to the wind for this post, sorry for the necessary decoding:
Buchan was a good trip - I spent the week wandering slowly back and forth along a creek valley telling second year students how to log volcanic sediments. There's a 400 metre-thick section of volcanic ash and breccia that was violently spewed from a volcano about 400 million years ago, which apparently makes for an interesting bit of rock for the youngins' to look at. Each lunchtime a kangaroo mom and her joey came by to visit and three kookaburras competed for the loudest call. Piccies and stuff comin', sorry about the delays with those. I developed a wee bit of a crappy throat after all that 'exertion' and coughed some pretty awful viscous biochemical extravasations on Monday and Tuesday.
Speaking of health, my camera has had a bit of a hiccough lately - it's decided that it doesn't like proper colour balance and has started giving me odd combinations of red, green, and yellow, black and white, or negatives. Oh well, 5600 snaps in 18 months has taken it's toll, I suppose. What with the humidity changes on the boat on the Great Barrier Reef, the rainstorms in Tasmania, the rivers in Japan, the heat of Texas, the sunshine in Newfoundland, wind in Medicine Hat, and desert dust of Central Australia, I guess I can't expect too much more out of it. You know, as I'm reading that, it sounds almost utterly ridiculous... Life's just a big darn chair of bowlies, I guess.
I passed the weekend caring for Bruce and Helen's petite cat and gained a car for the trouble. They are travelling in Turkey for the next little while and I'm caring for the house and animal while they are away. The big event on Saturday was the Aussie Rules Football Grand Final when the state stops and watches the Stanley Cup of Victorian sport. Then on Sunday was the Queenslander's grand final - rugby.
But seriously, things are pressing and when I stop brooding, I'll have a big decision for my faithfull readers. I promise that the next post will be about Japan and will include pictures.
Love you all...
The coast on the other side of the island is a lot more wild than on my side, but on several days, the weather was beautiful and the waves weren't that big. As you go north along this road, it weaves in and out of the mountainsides, but pretty much follows the coast for many tens of kilometres.
A little further afield, as I neared Sapporo, I took a detour to a caldera complex west of the airport. There are several active volcanoes there, including one down which they had the downhill and super-g races during the Olympics in 1972. The mountain (Eniwa-dake) has now fully regrown with barely a trace of any deforestation left on it, meaning there isn't any more skiing to be had.
